The Lunatics’ Common Room is the first solo exhibition by photographer-artist Yoanna Walden. Featuring 15 carefully staged photographic works, Walden aims to create a shared space for those historically deprived of their autonomy within psychiatric institutions, while interrogating systems of control and the social construction of madness. We sat down for an exclusive interview with Yoanna Walden.
The exhibition runs from 2nd to 12th September at Four Corners Gallery- More information here
The Lunatics’ Common Room imagines a space in which artists and writers who experienced psychiatric confinement can meet and converse. How did you decide which figures to bring into this “common room”, and what connections emerged between them during your research?
My process evolved quite organically. For example, I found out about 19th century activist John Perceval’s asylum experiences while I was researching the history of mental hospitals in Bristol, and the Brazilian verbal artist Stella do Patrocínio (who was institutionalised from 1962 until her death in 1992) from an article in Asylum magazine. I actively looked for range and balance, trying to find men and women from a range of countries, cultural contexts, and periods. I prioritised people beyond very well known individuals of whom I was already aware when I started the project (e.g. Lou Reed, Marilyn Monroe, Louis Wain, Leonora Carrington – all people I greatly admire). It was not as simple as a question of fame; Osamu Dazai and Bessie Head, very important, canonical literary and cultural figures in Japan and Botswana respectively, were included as they are not familiar to most people in the UK.
Throughout my research, I sensed a lot of connections between the people I was learning about, and often wished that they had been able to meet one another. Many of them had a feeling for the permeability and multi-layered nature of the body and the physical world, with visions of the overlapping and transformation of creatures, peoples and things.
They all had their own ways of expressing how they were treated as inhuman, during their asylum experiences. Dazai used the term ‘No Longer Human’ in his published hospital diary to describe how he and other patients were regarded and treated. For Valerie Valere, it was “a bag of bones”. Many of the other occupants of The Lunatics’ Common Room used similar analogies. Something else that I think a lot of these people had in common was a certain toughness and outspokenness, they were unafraid to express their truth, and if they were afraid, they still did it anyway. This is something that attracted me, and throughout working on this project I think their bravery has been rubbing off on me.
Your photographs draw on the dramatic staging and symbolism of Dutch still-life painting, while the custom frames also form part of each work. How do composition, objects and framing help you reveal meanings that may not be immediately visible?
In my photographs I often try to charge inanimate objects with a sense of life and layers of meaning. I frequently employ boxlike objects and angles, which reinforces the sense of confinement and restriction.
Wood plays a central role in the aesthetic of this series, both in the images themselves and in the framing devices used. To become wood, trees lose their identity as trees, something I see as a parallel to the dehumanisation of the psychiatric patient. On the other hand, wood is a comforting, domestic material. The Lunatics’ Common Room, in common with the family home, contains wood as a comfort and a retort to the sterile metal, tile and wipe-clean surfaces of the mental hospital.
The exhibition combines historical research with your own experiences of hospitalisation and those of your late uncle, Hannes. How did you navigate the emotional and ethical challenges of transforming these deeply personal experiences into art?
Working on this project has been a fascinating and intense experience for me. The subject matter of this series is an obviously emotional terrain and can be difficult for me to deal with at times. Despite these challenges, I have found a great sense of community through my research that has offered me a sense of peace that I haven’t felt in the past. I believe that art is a powerful way to express things one normally can’t and I am using it as an avenue to regain power and a voice that has been taken from me.
The figures included in The Lunatics’ Common Room are no longer around to tell me their opinion on it, and I can never be sure exactly what they would think. However, as someone who has also experienced psychiatric detention, I aim to respect and honour their lives and legacies and have drawn almost exclusively on works published / exhibited by them during their lifetimes.
The exhibition challenges the belief that psychiatric institutions and restrictive practices belong largely to the past. What continuities between historical and contemporary systems of confinement do you most want audiences to recognise?
At a time when conversations around mental health are more visible than ever, I would argue that increased awareness has not been matched by meaningful structural change. The enduring stigma surrounding experiences of madness has changed little, I would argue, since the 19th century. While the politics of diagnosis, and the closed and secretive nature of psychiatric institutions, continues to create conditions in which people’s rights and voices can go unheard and unchecked.
My work addresses the ethical structures around the practice of various physical, chemical, and psychological forms of restraint still being used today. For example, examining the gap between the clinical language used to describe such interventions and the direct experiences of those subjected to them, or the rebranding of the asylum as the mental hospital, and of people from lunatics / mad(wo)men to patients / consumers.
If audiences come away from my exhibition with an understanding of this underlying continuity, I would feel that my work has had a positive effect. Before change can take place, people must know what the current status quo actually is.
You developed your practice independently after leaving school at fifteen, and you are now preparing to begin an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art. How has being self-taught shaped your artistic voice, and what do you hope formal study will bring to your practice?
Leaving school early is a path I’m very happy to have gone down, as I think that being outside of the education system has forced me to be creative in every aspect of my life and broadened my horizons in many ways. The ability to think outside of the box that I’ve had to gain because of this has really benefited my artistic practice and made experimentation a natural part of my process. Being self-taught has allowed me to draw on a unique pool of references and inspiration as I have been freer to follow my interests and instincts than might normally be the case in a formal art setting.
I am very excited to enter a new chapter for my practice as I begin the Photography MA at The Royal College of Art. I have been working in a very isolated manner and am looking forward to being surrounded by artists with different perspectives and ways of creating. I hope to exchange and work together through thoughts and ideas and to learn about others and myself throughout the process.